Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Ron Paul Teams up with the UN Against his Supporters

"Revolutions eat their own children"- Robespierre

Well it looks like the mask has finally slipped, Congressman Ron Paul the "Peoples Candidate" and man who if you believe his supporters kept America's founding fathers dream of liberty alive (Sorry Gary Johnson you may have had the backbone to actually ditch the two party system you rail against but you just can't match Ron's winning smile) has had a falling out with some of his most enthusiastic and hard working supporters.

Ron Paul like many well known people does not own RonPaul.com or RonPaul.org nor there associated email lists and contacts. Fortunately for Ron the people whom do own those domain's not only didn't use the opportunity to plaster smears and internet jokes like many other famous name websites owned by strangers but also built a very active platform for Ron Paul's political career that they claim has a value over a $100,000.

The value we put on the deal was $250k; we are getting our mailing list
appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than
$250k all by itself. Claims that we tried to sell Ron Paul “his name”
for $250k or even $800k are completely untrue, and there is little doubt
that our mailing list would have enabled Ron Paul to raise several
million dollars for the liberty movement this year. It would have been a
win/win/win situation for everyone involved.

Instead of accepting this "win/win/win" for the "Liberty" movement Ron Paul decided to ignore the market and go to the UN to sue the current owners of the sites and get them through legal expropriation. Apart from being very bad form spitting in the face(s) of his supporters after years of hard work. This is extremely hypocritical of Mr Paul on three counts, first as "Libertarian" he has spent most of his political career over 40 years of his life championing the greatness of the market and an extreme form of Laissez-faire capitalism that would make Gladstone look like a Communist. So for him to pass up an opportunity for a market transaction without even haggling in favour of legal intervention is a pretty big U-turn.

The fact that he's doing this to a online platform for his views is also pretty lousy. If you asked a Ron Paul supporter why if Ron is so great does he do so poorly when seeking nomination like I often did in the run up to the elections the standard response was to blame the hostility or indifference of the mainstream media. Even Ron himself would resort to this explanation in interviews now they're right that Ron Paul doesn't enjoy much of presence on television and in newspapers (aside from his own newsletters) but you can say the same thing of a lot of other political parties and presidential candidates. Did anyone see Jill Stein or Ralph Nader or the Greens getting much attention in the elections? How about Libertarian party running man Gary Johnson? Or anyone else not under the Elephant or Donkey platform? But regardless this like of column inches and sound bites meant that Ron Paul's campaign was highly dependent on word of mouth (tricky since many of his supporters had a cultish vibe about them*) and the internet so that made RonPaul.com/org a very important tool of his campaign so we can add extreme ingratitude to the hypocrisy and bad form charges.

The icing on the cake is that in order to legally strong arm his supporters into giving him their years of hard work for free Ron has gone to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which is a body under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. The same United Nations that Ron Paul has spent much of his political career lambasting for threatening America's sovereignty. Funny how he no longer cares about the sovereignty of his American supporters business rights now he stands to profit from its legal framework. For a reminder here's an extract from Ron Paul's 2003 article entitled Time to Renounce the United Nations?

Most
Americans rightfully resent this arrogant attitude toward our national
sovereignty and don't care what the UN thinks about our war plans.
Perhaps our heritage as a nation of people who do not take kindly to
being told what to do is intact. Still, only the most ardent war hawks
connected with the administration have begun to discuss complete
withdrawal from the UN. I have advocated this for twenty years, and have
introduced legislation to that effect.

Those bureaucrats
are not satisfied by meddling only in international disputes, however.
The UN increasingly wants to influence our domestic environmental,
trade, labor, tax, and gun laws. Its global planners fully intend to
expand the UN into a true world government, complete with taxes, courts,
and a standing army.

Emphasis my own.

Not well Charlie, Not well at all

Personally I'm not surprised at all by this, the ideology of Market Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists and Individualists has been proven time and again to be nothing more then an elaborate attempt to justify its proponents own selfish lifestyles. The really sad thing is that since the only way these ideas can get even a sliver of mass support is by dressing it up in populist rhetoric exploiting the resentment of established elites they occasionally snare a few well meaning people wishing to make a better world and exploit them as ruthlessly as a Feudal Noble does his serfs.

* By that I mean to say a lot of the most vocal RP "Revolutionaries" despite proudly calling themselves Libertarians who would extensively criticise government policy and subject every agency and politician to a high level of scrutiny they would never do so with Paul. The news letters? An establishment lie blown out of proportion, his wish to repeal the Civil Rights Act? We don't need it racism isn't economically viable, his opposition to a women's liberty to decide whether or not to get an abortion? his votes to repeal Roe V Wade were about the Federal governments power not a women's choice. The fact that Paul's extreme deregulation drive would leave many of the corporate entities that prop up the current system you rail against unchecked and increase there influence? Socialist propaganda etc.